Invensys Operations Management's new Wonderware Intelligence Software 1.0 is a source-agnostic, enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) software designed to transform historian and operations data from multiple sources (Invensys or any other brand) into business intelligence dashboards.

Invensys Operations Management introduced its Wonderware Intelligence Software 1.0 solution at the company’s OpsManage event in Anaheim, CA (Nov. 3-5, 2009). This source-agnostic, enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) software is designed to transform historian and operations data from multiple sources (Invensys or any other brand) into business intelligence dashboards by aggregating process and production data in real time and adding contextual elements, such as equipment, product, work orders, material, and personnel. The dashboards can be used to monitor, tune, and optimize operations and supply chains.

Invensys Intelligence 1.0 features include:

– Ability to acquire data not only from the Wonderware family of products, including MES, InBatch and Historian, but also from external systems such as ERP, LIMS, PDM, as well as other execution systems and historians, to provide plant, multi-plant, and corporate-wide views of operations and performance.

Maryanne Steidinger, director of product marketing, Invensys Operations Management, said, "This information context provided by Intelligence enables end users to gain insights into the root causes of problems and understand how production events are related. All of the sources Intelligence pulls from can visually show data. The value of the Intelligence solution is that it regularly refreshes the data from the various sources to show trends rather than just snapshots."

Data adapters, explained Steidinger, are the key enablers that supply data to the Intelligence solution and foster its source-agnostic approach. Adapters are currently available for Wonderware MES, OSIsoft PI historian, and SAP ERP. An OLE adapter for accessing most general database files is expected to be made available in the next few months.

During the OpsManage ’09 event, Wonderware announced that it had held an Intelligence dashboard creation contest among its partners. The idea of the contest was to show how custom dashboards can be created by partners to drill down into industry-specific customer requirements.

The winner of the contest was Glenmount Global Solutions (see photo), a professional services firm focusing on instrumentation, control and electrical, and automation solutions. Its dashboard entry focused on energy management by highlighting average and current operating costs, which were then broken down into corporate kWh costs and plant kWh current and average costs.

Other entrants recognized in the contest included:

– Cognizant, an IT, business process, and strategic consulting company, which developed a maintenance dashboard for use in food and beverage applications. Its Intelligence solution dashboards were capable of pulling data from historians and MES applications to identify problems in the line, provide role-based views and KPIs, highlight capability to produce, and enable cross-plant collaboration. (See photo.)

– IPACT Manufacturing Solutions developed a performance dashboard that showcases an array of data grouped by products being produced in a facility. Users can view data from a high-level or drill-down mode by operator, product, or shift. Specific reports can also be generated from the dashboard. (See photo.)